Sharing a Secret
Okay, y’all. Because you are such devoted friends, I have a little secret to share with you: This is the cover of my debut novel coming in September from Mercer University Press. We have all worked...
View ArticleJournalism vs. Fiction
So you may have heard by now that I have a novel coming out in September. It’s my sixth book and my first work of fiction. I’d be lying if I said I’m not nervous about it. You’d be scared, too, if you...
View ArticleBeloved Brothers
I have long recognized that crossing over a border, be it between Georgia and Florida, or Germany and Switzerland, meant that I was going to happen up a people of a different sort. While it is true...
View ArticleThe Creative’s Path
Whenever people ask how I became a writer I tell them Vietnam made me a writer. I have met people who don’t get it, the way my identity as a writer, as a person, is so intricately shaped by war. The...
View ArticleWhat Zeb & the 505th taught me
It’s a funny business, this creative process. Sometimes I know exactly where a notion to write something comes from, and other times it seems to spring up from something beyond. Consider Zebulon for...
View ArticleReconciling a dark past
One of the things that surprised me the most about the trip to Normandy was the number of Germans paying tribute at the American war memorials at Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery. I’ve spent a lot...
View ArticleA Foreigner in a Native Land
We rented a car in France. Several friends had urged us to make the drive along the Normandy coast ourselves, rather than to rely on a tour bus. That made the most sense, anyway, because I was...
View ArticleParachute Powell: A visit with a Modern-Day Zeb
While making an appearance at Litchfield Books in South Carolina, I had the opportunity to interview a World War II veteran. Powell was parachute infantryman during World War II. A job he volunteered...
View ArticleMothers & Mental Illness
My childhood girlfriend was institutionalized following the birth of her first-born. Here she was, ten years later, in the third-trimester of her second pregnancy, talking out of her head again. We...
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